JULES
Your mom and I are in hell right now and the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really fuckin’ hard. It’s just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing — fucking marathon, okay? So sometimes, you know, you’re together so long you stop seeing the other person, you just see weird projections of your own junk. Instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails, and act grubby, and make stupid choices, which is what I did. And I feel sick about it because I love you guys, and your mom, and that’s the truth. And sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most, and I don’t know why. You know, if I read more Russian novels… Anyway… I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I did. I hope you’ll forgive me eventually. Thank you.
* * *
What you’ve just read is a transcript of Julianne Moore’s beautiful speech about marriage — or, rather, the beautiful speech about marriage that Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg wrote for Moore’s character Jules to give to her wife and two children — in “The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features, 7/9, trailer), one of this year’s leading awards contenders. In theaters, one can hear the sound of a pin drop as Moore delivers these lines. Later this year, it will undoubtedly be played over and over again to introduce her as a nominee at awards ceremonies. And, come Oscar time, it might well join the list (scroll down) of movie speeches that can be credited for almost single-handedly securing an acting nomination or win.
What makes this speech click, like most of those others, is this: it articulates some “greater truth” that applies not only to the characters in the film, but universally. Moore doesn’t say “the bottom line is gay marriage is hard,” but rather “the bottom line is marriage is hard,” and her description of it is something that rings true for any couple that’s been together for a long time — gay, straight, or otherwise. (Just listen to the murmured conversation in theaters after the scene ends.)
Interestingly, a March 2009 version of the script — a copy of which I have obtained — called for a speech that differs markedly from the one that made the final cut. Here is what was to be said:
* * *
JULES
I need to say something.
Everyone sits up. Jules has a look of strength and resolution we’ve yet to see before.
JULES (cont’d)
Look, it’s no secret your mom and I have been going through a rough patch lately. That happens in marriages, especially ones that have lasted as long as ours. But instead of looking at our problems and trying to deal with them head-on, I went and did something really stupid. It may be shocking to you, but adults aren’t exempt from making mistakes. Anyway, I know you’re all really furious with me. I can take that. I’m a big girl. But what I can’t take is the thought that my bad decisions have ruined your relationship with a good man…
[preempting Nic]
Call him what you want, Nic, but Paul’s a good guy. No, he isn’t blameless, he was there too. But if I’m gonna be honest about it, the person who really pushed it was me.
[beat; to the kids]
I know this whole thing’s confusing. I wish it wasn’t. But life’s just like that sometimes.
And with that, Jules hands the remote back to Laser and departs the field. Everyone’s shocked by Jules’ show of strength, especially Nic.
* * *
I don’t know how the speech in the March 2009 version evolved into the one that made the final cut, but the fact that it did changed the entire tone and direction of the film. In the earlier version, Jules apologizes, just like she does in the later version, but she also pointedly stands up for Paul. The problem with this course of action is that Nic, who is no shrinking wallflower, probably wouldn’t take kindly to hearing her wife — with whom she is already not speaking — defend her lover. The benefit, however, would be an improvement in the character arc of Paul, a character with whom we spend a lot of time and come to like, but who is abruptly shunted out of sight in the final cut. The speech in the March 2009 version lays the groundwork for another event that takes place in that script but not in the final cut: the family, at Joni’s request, makes a brief stop at Paul’s place to allow Paul and Joni to reconcile before she heads to college. This, perhaps, would have offered Joni a greater sense of peace and the audience a greater sense of closure.
* * *
Here is a list of movie speeches/monologues/soliloquies — most accompanied by links to corresponding video footage — that I am convinced made the difference between getting a nod or not, or winning or not. (I’m excluding others, such as Marlon Brando’s “Coulda been a contenda,” that undoubtedly woulda been “contendas” anyway.)
- Lionel Barrymore in “A Free Soul” (1931) for best actor WON — MGM’s pre-Code classic, released during the early days of the sound era, climaxes with an incredible 14-minute take of Barrymore’s alcoholic attorney passionately addressing the court in defense of his daughter’s lover, and then collapsing of a heart attack and dying
- Gary Cooper in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936) for best actor — a young Cooper secured his first career Oscar nod in no small part because of his speech in his own defense at his sanity hearing, after which the judge declares him “the sanest man who ever walked into this courtroom”
- Charlie Chaplin in “The Great Dictator” (1940) for best actor — Charlie never received an acting nod before or after this one, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that this usually silent actor’s decision to speak out against dictatorship and in favor of democracy at the end of this film, which was released on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II, helped to secure him this one
- Harold Russell in “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) for best supporting actor WON — Russell, who lost his hands while training with the U.S. 13th Airborne Division for World War II, had never acted before, but moved people so much with his speech to his fiancée that he was preemptively given an honorary Oscar just to make sure that he went home with something… and then won the category outright, too!
- Ben Johnson in “The Last Picture Show” (1971) for best supporting actor WON — the veteran actor Johnson, playing a local hero named Sam the Lion, takes a couple of neighborhood kids fishing and wistfully reminisces about the way things used to be, including some personal experiences that unfolded in his own life at that same spot
- Ned Beatty in “Network” (1976) for best supporting actor — in this shocking scene, Beatty — playing the high-powered head of the conglomerate that owns the TV network on which the “crazed prophet” Howard Beale has been ranting — lectures Beale for 4.5 uninterrupted minutes, blasting him for meddling with “the primal forces of nature” and laying out to him “The New World Order” that he will henceforth preach on the air
- Beatrice Straight in “Network” (1976) for best supporting actress WON — over the course of 2 explosive minutes (part of the briefest performance to ever result in an Oscar win: just 5 minutes and 40 seconds), Straight expresses the hurt and betrayal that her husband of 25 years has inflicted on her by cheating with a co-worker with whom he now admits he is in love
- Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” (1979) for best supporting actor — Duvall, playing a somewhat deranged U.S. Lt. Col. Kilgore (originally named “Lt. Col. Carnage”) in this tale of the Vietnam War, commands his men to demolish a village near a beach because he’s heard that it offers great waves for surfing, and thereafter explains to several of them why he loves “the smell of napalm in the morning”
- Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” (1992) for best supporting actor — while on the witness stand during a trial in which two innocent military men are being accused of crimes they did not commit, Nicholson’s Col. Nathan Jessep cracks under pressure from Tom Cruise’s defense attorney and, after shouting, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!,” proceeds to tell it.
- Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction” (1994) for best supporting actor — Jackson plays a ruthless killer who precedes his many murders by reciting from memory the biblical passage Ezekiel 25:17
- Virginia Madsen in “Sideways” (2004) for best supporting actress — Madsen, a TV star of the 1980s who had largely dropped out of the spotlight as she entered her forties, was never more mesmerizing than in the late-night scene in which she explains to Paul Giamatti’s vulnerable oenophile why she, too, loves wine (“how it’s a living thing…”)
- Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” (2008) for best supporting actor — in just 8 minutes of screen time, Shannon — who was known, if at all, for his work on the stage — stole the film from his more famous co-stars DiCaprio and Winslet, whose characters his “not well” former mathematician torments by stating the facts that neither of them were willing to face